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Why copy the American model on healthcare?
• THE advice given in DC Steele’s letter (Paying for treatment, April 17) should be rejected as what will happen is an American style of paying if you get sick, with limited treatment being given through private insurance.
A few years back an Indian doctor friend of mine came to work for a couple of years in the UK. He then moved the US.
Last year I visited him in New York and his words resonate in my ears still: “Don’t lose your NHS”. He said it is true that in the US you get taken off the streets to a hospital if you have an accident or collapse but then the problems begin.
Medication and treatment are not available unless you have medical insurance and we all know the political wars that are going on in that country over health, with eyes toward our NHS medicine.
Why then copy the United States?
If DC Steele is not happy with his/her doctor then it is very easy to change to another practice.
I can only hope DC Steele doesn’t get sick on holiday abroad without insurance or, should the nightmare prospect of privatisation of the NHS ever arise, here in the UK. The shocking behaviour of members of the Camden Primary Care Trust in allowing the the takeover by UnitedHealth (reference Michael Moore’s movie Sicko) should act as a warning of the New Labour directive to privatise every aspect of our lives.
Clem Alford
Tavistock Place, WC1
Moral maze
• I READ with interest the report by Richard Osley (Health chiefs are united on a ‘moral high ground’, April 10).
I note that that was part of the sentence Dr John Carrier used when he was quoted as saying “We give the moral high ground to no one in our defence of the NHS”.
Would it be possible to ask Dr Carrier what he means by this?
It means nothing to me but empty rhetoric!
Given the high degree of displeasure by so many residents over the decision to hand control of the three GP surgeries to UnitedHealth and the possibility that the Camden out-of-hours service (Camidoc) may go the same way, I would suggest the words “moral outrage” more appropriate.
Might I suggest to Dr Carrier that if he and his colleagues are contemplating more handovers, whether that be Camidoc and/or other GP surgeries, they do the decent “moral” thing and consult the people who matter, that is us, Camden residents and users of the National Health Service.
A simple consultation document spelling out the whole thing in language all of us can understand and have time to debate, question and vote on would to my mind be “moral”, more democratic and more honest.
Margaret Harvey
Camden Mews, NW1
Pill politics
• YOUR heading, Wanted: politicians who will defend GP surgeries (April 10) hit me in the face.
I am now 70 and a former employee of the NHS. I am a “client”, so to speak, of GPs in a Hampstead practice.
I had an illness lasting some considerable length of time and now need regular help from the surgery.
I read somewhere recently that chemists should take over from GP practices. Pigs might fly!
Some pharmacists are a lot better than others, taking a real interest, but others hand over the pills without comment.
Name and address supplied, NW3
Doc’s space
• ISN’T it just great when you realise the local council really has its finger on the pulse?
No 10 York Road had a doctor’s surgery in the basement until 18 months ago, I wonder why the sign Doctor parking only is still in place and why Doctor was recently repainted in the road.
It is depriving permit holders of another parking space.
Gary Swann
Camden Road, NW1
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